AI Helps Improve Agent's Mental Health and Physical Wellbeing

Published 16/01/25 under:

Poor mental health causes nearly one–third (31%) of contact centre staff and 29% of Gen Z workers to take time off. And half (46%) feel lonely at work^[1]. Yet, managers and supervisors cannot be everywhere all the time. Better tools for earlier detection and effective intervention are where AI can help. 

Building from a solid base 

Contact centres are naturally tough environments. Agents regularly feel the strain of over-busy workloads while managing emotional situations with insufficient support. Over 20% highlight the inability to help customers as a major stress trigger, while 15% say they don’t have enough time and feel under pressure to get to the next contact^[2]. 

It’s widely recognised that prolonged stress and exhaustion can lead to a range of health issues such as anxiety, depression, sleep disturbance and susceptibility to illnesses. 

Contact centre platforms need to be designed with both agents and customers in mind. Agents shouldn’t be drowning in work, and customers shouldn’t arrive at the interaction already stressed. This human-centred approach is crucial to prevent burnout and improve the overall experience.

Ensuring frictionless customer and employee journeys is an essential first step; but alone it’s not enough to protect against extremes. Advanced mental guardrails are needed to cope with today’s growing pressures. And that’s where a platform with AI-powered capabilities can be a massive out-of-the-box advantage. 

Elevating employee welfare

New AI tools offer CX and contact centre leaders a much more robust and human-centric approach. Below are four practical steps, which make good starting points:

1. Reduce anxiety levels – Ensure agents only receive contacts that play to their skills and comfort zones with predictive routing.
2. Increase job satisfaction – Implement timely support and eliminate tedious note-taking and wrap-up work with agent assist.
3. Intercept stressful situations – Monitor emotional tone for interactions that ought to be escalated using speech and text analytics.
4. Improve reward and recognition – Introduce fun and make work hugely more enjoyable with gamification.

Best practice use cases: Creating healthy contact centres

Walsall Council is building a central knowledge base with Genesys Agent Assist, which also supports agents by surfacing helpful articles, automating post-interaction tasks and summarising conversations. Beavering away in the background, AI-based sentiment analysis tools alert supervisors to incidents or calls where customers may be struggling, so they can proactively and politely intervene.  

Also, by integrating Genesys Cloud with Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM systems, the Council is releasing agents to deal with more interesting and fulfilling tasks, such as looking after vulnerable and at-risk customers.  

Another Kerv Experience customer, West Lindsey District Council, uses Genesys AI to send website links that encourage mobile callers to self-serve. Delivering 10 hours of efficiency gains within the first week of going live, the solution has significantly reduced agent pressure. 

Other initiatives to lower stress and help agents reset include two-minute exercise prompts, jigsaw puzzles, team awards and utterance bingo (key phrases captured using the Genesys Architect tool). 

CX and contact centre leaders have a responsibility for prioritising employee wellbeing and creating a healthy work environment. Kerv and Genesys solutions can help overcome the triggers of agent burnout – staving off lost productivity, unnecessary recruitment, training expenses, and CX degradation. 

As the longest standing Genesys Cloud partner in EMEA, with the most successful deployments, Kerv Experience continues to help clients accelerate improvements that boost customer experience and employee experience. To learn more, please get in touch.

 

[1] Retail Trust Report
[2] Preventing Contact Center Agent Burnout, Jeff Toister